WHYY had a nice piece this week marking the 100th birthday of the Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley,

The company was founded as a collective by Jasper Deeter, an actor and director who left New York when he felt the city’s theater scene was becoming too commercial. In 1923 he discovered the former mill, which by then had been sporadically used at the turn of the century as a theater space: for several years Rose Valley had been a utopian community of artisans collectively making furniture, pottery, and metalwork.

“He came to Rose Valley and fell in love with this particular building and this community, which was anchored in the Arts and Crafts movement,” said Bramucci. “It was an entire community of artists and artisans.”

Deeter created Hedgerow as a repertory theater, meaning it would stage a different play almost every day. He championed new work, forging close ties to contemporary playwrights of the day like Eugene O’Neil, George Bernard Shaw, and Seán O’Casey.